for some reason, i'm attracting a lot of people who don't regularly post in the paladin forums. I know that many people like to lurk, but believe me when i say that paladins actually can viably use DPS gear for tanking. Could i get a paladin forum regular in here, like Requital, Anaxie, Synthaxx or Badpaladin? someone who actually knows something about paladin tanking?

I can totally accept that my gear is just underleveled, and I'm fairly sure that's a large part of the issue. but DPS gear should be fine to tank raids with, and takes less damage spikes.

Oh, oh, oh pick me, I play a prot paladin!

I didn't look at your armory but from what I've read possible issues could be: not useless, but less than optimal gemming; dps enchants as opposed to tanking optimal ones; low ilvl; maybe lack of experience tanking.

Also, don't fret, you're not the only tank dying to trash in ToT. We died plenty of times! Don't be afraid to use big cooldowns whenever you want. Glyph for physical dmg reduction on DP since the trash before jinrokh is a lot of trolls and snakes. Your healers could have been garbage, they should be using CDs too. Often times on a pull, one tank will get all the aggro and the other will just sort of be there. SPlitting the aggro evenly can help. Use seal of Insight, so many healings!

Some good talents to pick would be fist of justice (stunned things dont hurt), unbreakable spirit (more DP), holy prism (good snap heal/threat). Holy avenger can be really good too since most trash pulls shouldnt last very long - good short burst of 50% less physical dmg and high dps. Divine purpose is also not bad, just unpredictable.

As a prot paladin, I'm pretty sure the ToT trash is more difficult than Jin'rokh. We've lost more people to the bridge boss than I care to mention.
The trash hit hard and some of them apply a stacking Mortal Strike-like debuff (although I don't remember if the ones before Jin'rokh do).

How were your healers? It may be a combination of being under-geared and not receiving enough heals. I had to switch to Holy when we first cleared the trash yesterday and our tanks would spike fairly often. Those snakes have a poison debuff that can drop you really fast if the healers don't keep you up.

You may also just not have enough health. Not necessarily your fault but I'm sure more gear would help a lot. I upgraded from the blue craftable axe to the Elegon axe a few weeks ago and I saw a noticeable jump in health.

Also - the title of this thread may have something to do with the large amount of lurkers coming out to play.

iLvL, on the other hand, is an entirely different and legitimate issue. If the LFR requires a 480 iLvL, you can figure that is the bare minimum of what is expected to do 5.2 normal mode, trash or otherwise.

We did a trash run yesterday with mains from all 3 teams in guild jsut to get rep so we could get to friendly (complete one of the shado-pan assault quest after having 2999/3000 and you will hit friendly.

And our Paladin got bitch slapped so often he almost turned into a woman.

Part of the issue is they changed prot pally mechanics a little bit in 5.2 in order to make dodge/parry more attractive. You're getting almost half the Grand Crusader procs you were getting before if you have 0 dodge/parry. This means less Holy Power so less WoG and SotR. Doesn't mean the old priorities are wrong necessarily, but it does mean that you've got a lot less mitigation today than you did last week.

The changes also brought avoidance way up in terms of value, though not so much as to outpace haste or mastery stacking for a skilled tank. But in terms of skillcap, haste is the hardest and avoidance the easiest - these changes make avoidance a lot more attractive for the casual tank. Since changes also increased the difficulty of the haste-stacking method you have to be better about your mitigation buttons. I"m not going to make assumptions about your talent level one way or the other, but it's certainly a possibility that you've got some skill issues that are exaggerated by haste stacking.

Couple that with being 10 ilvls undergeared and probably having DPS who didn't handle the trash mechanics right (and yes, there are a few mechanics even on that first set of pulls) and it makes sense that you'd have trouble.

And @ Raugnaut, most classes I know actually prefer the secondary gems, I can't think of many off the top of my head that still use reds - maybe there's a few that do out of the classes I don't know the gearing priority for off the top of my head - but that would hardly qualify as "most"

And @ Raugnaut, most classes I know actually prefer the secondary gems, I can't think of many off the top of my head that still use reds - maybe there's a few that do out of the classes I don't know the gearing priority for off the top of my head - but that would hardly qualify as "most"

To the OP, I think it is mostly a gear issue in your case as well as your group not knowing the trash. We did have 1-2 tank deaths in our trash runs at mostly ilvl 504+ 25m. Then after that our warrior tank would call for me to bop the debuff stacks off of him.

The initiates stack up a bleed effect that does a metric ton of damage. Let it stack beyond 4-5 (easily possible) and you'll see tanks with far better gear than yours start to drop dangerously low (I died a few times to it with over il 500 equipped).

Partially because it's new content and trash mobs very often are mobs that have slightly less damaging copies of the raid bosses abilities to teach you mechanics. Also expected because it's a trash farm and whether 10 or 25 they tend to attract a bizarre mix of competence and directionless idiocy. (Just seems like if you're not willing to fight a boss that you've got a lot of folks who just aren't committing and are only there to get their shinies - I'd say it's worse than LFR in that respect.)

Anyway, you'll learn abilities and you'll gear up and trash won't be such a big deal. Until then, well, say hello to your new best friend the repair bill.

At the moment, especially for Protection Paladins, they made a few changes in 5.2 to make Dodge/Parry more appealing, this also made Mastery more appealing. You linked Sacred duty, so you obviously have a small amount of knowledge. If you're under geared, especially your iLvl, you're going to want to go with Mastery. Mastery, mastery, mastery. Unless you're a top, experienced, geared tank there is no reason for you to go with haste at all.

We are perfectly fine to tank in dps gear. The only thing to remember is that you need hit/expertize hard caps. Rest go to haste(and maybe stam). That's it. Forget about trolls who say we need tank gear. And trash is not so hard, just take it easy, one by one(better spend 10 minutes killing trash then 30min running from graveyard).

We are perfectly fine to tank in dps gear. The only thing to remember is that you need hit/expertize hard caps. Rest go to haste(and maybe stam). That's it. Forget about trolls who say we need tank gear. And trash is not so hard, just take it easy, one by one(better spend 10 minutes killing trash then 30min running from graveyard).

graveyard is like 10 meters from portal.

as for sunflora, i'm kinda using the same set for prot and ret, apart from the weapons. even same reforges, gems and enchants.

Currently only reading the Funny Pictures Megathread because the rest of the forums is filled with piss, whiners and pissed whiners.

DPS Gear is still viable, however only if you're hit capped and expertise hard capped, with Haste gemmed in every socket.

Strength is still a good stat, as it gives Parry. It's just not nearly as good as Haste or Mastery.

Glyph of Harsh Words could have killed you, as weird as it sounds. There was a bug in 5.0/5.1 (not sure if fixed) that your Word of Glory would target your previous target, even if you were targeting yourself. So if you were to try and heal yourself with 5xSOTR WOG Buff, you'd just be damaging your previous target.

Your 463 shield was probably one of your main problems too. A 476+ healing shield is better than a 463 tanking shield. (Disregard the main stat loss of strength. More stamina, more haste (for example) and more armour.)

Firefly33, a very good Paladin, a poster here, used a lot of healing gear for tanking for the pure armour and haste increase.

Yep, graveyard is 10 meters, you can chose for yourself what is better. For haste build to work, you need!! to be hit/expertize capped, or else you lose the whole idea(faster HoPo gain). Also, to answer your question, i have allmost the same gear in prot/retri.

Sunflora, you don't need to be top or geared player to play "haste". I tried both mastery and haste(blue gear) and haste is much more better(my opinion). And more fun.

DPS gear is still better than tank gear, haste is still prot's most valuable stat, the dodge and parry changes were just to make it slightly less useless if you are forced to use a traditional tank item.

I tanked all the fights at least once during last tiers progression if a tank didn't show up or something. I did this in 100% dps gear, all you need to do is reforge to hit/hard exp cap, and maybe throw on a stam trinket since you are missing the stamina enchants.

The initiates stack up a bleed effect that does a metric ton of damage. Let it stack beyond 4-5 (easily possible) and you'll see tanks with far better gear than yours start to drop dangerously low (I died a few times to it with over il 500 equipped).

How useful is Hand of Purity for dealing with this damage? Does it make a noticeable difference, or is its duration too short to matter?